5 Signs You Spend too Many Weekends Away from Your Dorm

It can be tempting as a college kid living the dorm life to spend your weekends at home, especially if it's just a train, bus, or car ride away. Your stuff is there. The people who love you are there. Food and noncommunal living spaces are there! But some of the most important parts of college life take place between Friday afternoon and Monday morning—and we're not just talking about the "WHOOOOO" parts. We're talking about the reading all day under a tree wearing tweed parts, the up all night Boggle-and-Disney marathon parts, the pajama-dance-party Friday night parts! And it's not too late to turn back: though cliques can form within the first few days of school (because EVERYONE is desperate for friends), they're often just as quickly disbanded (because the first person you meet is unlikely to be your BFF for life). Real friendships start forming down the line—in classes, in clubs, in the caf...and over weekends at the dorm. Here are a few warning signs that it's time to spend the full seven days away from home:

Your clothes are clean. ALL of them. And they smell like Tide and they're soft from dryer sheets and your mom wrote a little note on top of them that says, "All clean for my jellybean! See you next Friday. xox." It's time to do what everyone else in college is doing: turn your underwear inside-out for a second-day wearing, Febreze the pits of your favorite sweater, and wear those jeans till they walk away by themselves (then brave the communal laundry room, for the love of Rowling).

You have not yet eaten horrible pizza at 1 in the morning. Because your fridge is full of Tupperwares of homemade food, so who needs greasy garlic-cheese bread? YOU DO. It's dorm-life tradition.

Your roommate screamed when you walked in on a Saturday morning. She's gotten so used to having the weekends to herself, she's declared it a Saturday/Sunday naked zone.

You're constantly finding stuff that isn't yours under your bed. You suspect your roommate's making extra bucks renting it out to the visiting friends of your fellow dorm mates. She suddenly seems to be getting much more expensive haircuts...

"See you Monday" is everybody's automatic response when you leave classes on Friday. It's gotten to the point that people assume you're your own ghost on the rare occasions that they run into you in the dorm halls on a Saturday night. If you say, "Nope, heading home for the weekend" one too many times, people might make the assumption that you're never up to hang out. So stick it out for a weekend, Sparklers!

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About the Author

Melissa Albert reads books, worries about other people’s dogs (they look thirsty), and eats horrible candy for fun and profit. When not wearing her extremely tasteful Sparkitor hat, she’s an editor for the Barnes & Noble Book Blog. You can find her on Twitter @mimi_albert, or in the hot pretzel section of your local cafeteria.